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In happy relationships, there are five simultaneous relationships happening. Healthy relationships are based upon each person having a relationship with him-or-herself. The relationship with the self is the basic building block of a relationship. Both parties must have broken through their denial systems to some extent, achieved some modicum of honesty with themselves, and become willing to take responsibility for themselves. In general, each must be a person in his or her own right. If one does not have a relationship with the self, it is truly impossible to have a living process (healthy) relationship; it will not be possible to be honest with the “other” if one is not in contact with oneself.

This relationship with the self is a source of pleasure and expansion and needs time and nurturing in order to grow. In order to have a relationship with the self, it is necessary to have quiet time alone, time to enrich one’s spirituality. A relationship with the self takes time. Truly having a relationship with our own process relates us to the process of the universe.

The next two relationships that occur in healthy relationships are each person’s fantasized relationship with the other. Each person has a fantasy about what is go in on with the other and about who the other is. In healthy relationships, it is necessary to bring these fantasized relationships into the conscious self, explore them, and make them available to and share them with the others. These relationships can be the source of a lot of fun, and as long as we know them for what they are, can add richness to our relationship with ourselves and with others.

A fifth relationship in healthy relationships is the actual relationship that exists between the two people. It is dependent upon the previous four having been developed, maintained, and “cleaned up” if necessary. Not that we have to be perfect to have a relationship; relationships provide a major arena for growth and self-awareness, and paradoxically they have to exist consciously and be worked with for the relationship between the self and other requires taking risks. In order to have this relationship, it is necessary to be able to see the self and the other and to respect the process of both. This relationship is a rich source of information for the self. And it is more than that; it is an opportunity to know and be known.

In healthy relationships, the focus is upon respecting one’s own process. When this happens, each – almost be default – respects the others journey and supports it as well as his or her own. Healthy relationships imply supporting each other, yet these is no focus upon “fixing” the other person. Each person’s process is respected and it is recognized that each must do what he or she must. It is understood that if I have feelings about what the other does, these are my feelings and I have to handle them as best I can. Commitment is not incarceration. It is each being committed to her or his own process, sharing that process, and respecting the process of the others.

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Love is not an exclusive relationship; love is a quality and depth of being. Our outer relationships are a mirror of our basic inner relationship with ourselves. Relationships are a balance, a development and a dance between our male and female qualities. All people seek love, joy and harmony in their own way. We all want to be loved for who we are. We all want to be acknowledged and accepted for the unique individual we are. The problem in relationships arises when we seek our own center, our own source of love, in another person. We seek a source of love outside of ourselves.

The problem in relationships is that the other person also seeks after his own center, his own source of love, in the other person. In this way both persons will sooner or later feel disappointed and cheated, because of their expectation on the other person. It is first when we let go of the idea and expectation that the other person will give us the love that we do not have inside ourselves, that the base for a really loving, satisfying and meaningful relationship is possible. It is first when the relationship becomes a giving of love, instead of a taking of love, that the relationship becomes really nourishing and satisfying. As long as we look for the source of love outside of ourselves, we will eventually become disappointed and disillusioned.

It is first when we can relate from our inner being, from our inner center, from our inner source of love and truth, that relationships becomes really loving, creative and satisfying. It is first when we discover the source of love within ourselves, which is our true nature, that we can become really happy and satisfied. As long as we need another person to cover up our inner feeling of emptiness, to cover up our inner darkness and loneliness, the relationship will sooner or later end up in disappointment frustration and disillusioned expectations. It is first when we no longer need the other person to fill our inner emptiness, that we consciously can relate from our inner being, from the authentic self, from our overflowing inner source of love.

When relationships are based on the expectation that a partner should fill our inner emptiness, it is like offering an empty cup to our partner with the expectation that the partner should fill our empty cup – instead of overflowing from our inner being and filling our cup from within ourselves. The difference between acting out of our inner being, from our inner source of love, and acting out of our inner emptiness, is like the difference between acting out of light and darkness. I have noticed how much of my professional life – as a therapist and a course leader – that has been a way to fill my own inner emptiness and a way to receive love, acknowledgement and acceptance. I notice what a difference it is to be in contact with another person from a desire to get love from the other person or to be in contact with another person without any desire to receive anything from the other person.

When I can rest in my own inner source of love, it creates a joy and a relaxation in me. It also gives me the freedom to give others the space to be who they are in the moment. I have also learnt not to act when I am not in the light. I have learnt to wait to act until I am in the light again. I have noticed that when I can be in contact with myself – instead of reacting automatically and searching love outside of myself – I can witness my own inner feeling of emptiness, my own need of love from without myself. This awareness changes my need to look for love outside of myself and it makes my own inner source of love begin to flow from within myself. It is awareness and acceptance that allows me to be with myself and witness my own feeling of wanting love from without myself. It is like being with this feeling and embrace it like a mother embraces her child. This awareness and acceptance makes me come back to my own center, instead of seeking source of love from without myself. I also notice that the more I can accept both when am in the light and when I am in the dark, the more this awareness and acceptance makes more light than dark moments arise.

A key to relationships is to know the difference between when it is time to hold on and when it is time to let go. The criteria are the degree of joy and satisfaction that the relationship creates. If there is love and truth in the relationship, life will sustain the relationship by itself. If there are not love and truth in the relationship, it will change. Expectations are the basic problem in relationships. Expectations are ideas of I should be, how my partner should be and how the relationship should be. When the relationship does not fit with our preconceived ideas and expectations, we become disappointed.

When I told a beautiful woman who I had a relationship with that I loved her for the first time, she did not answer back that she also love me. Instead she was silent for a long time and then she said: “You are courageous to say that!” Her own truth was that she was not ripe at that moment to say that she also loved me. At that moment she was not ripe to take the commitment that it means to say to another human being that “I love you.” I had no expectation that she should say that she also love me. For me it was a giving without expecting anything in return. For me it was a way to overflow from my inner source of love and truth. Instead of asking if she loves me, it is simply more creative to ask myself if I love her. It is a sharing of my love – and then it is up to the other person what he or she wants to do with it. He or she does not have to do anything with it either.

What is the difference between the love pole and the freedom pole in relationships? Relationships are a balance between love and freedom, where often one partner chooses the freedom pole and the other partner chooses the love pole. The freedom pole means that the partner chooses his own freedom, independence and individuality before the relationship. The love pole means that the partner chooses love, to be together and the relationship. It is like the image that one partner is always trying to run away from the relationship, while the other partner is running after. Earlier I have almost always chosen the freedom pole in relationships, but in one of my latest relationships I found myself in the love pole as she continuously chose her own freedom and independence before the relationship. It did not bother me as I loved her and it was also a valuable meditation for me. But I could also see that if the relationship should be alive and develop, both partners need to have a basic commitment to the relationship. Both partners need to have a love for each other so that these two poles do not become a mechanical way of reacting. If there is love and truth in the relationship, life will sustain the relationship by itself. If there are not love and truth in the relationship, it will change.

Through learning to both be alone with ourselves and to relate in love with other people, we can easier appreciate and accept when life offers us periods of both love and aloneness. It also makes it easier to see when it is authentic to be alone with ourselves and when it is authentic to relate to other people. Some people cling to relationships to avoid meeting their own aloneness. Other people chose aloneness so that they do not have to relate with other people and risk being hurt or betrayed. Through learning to both be alone with ourselves and to relate with other people, it gives us a new freedom to relate to life. It gives us a new joy and freedom in both being happy and satisfied in our own aloneness and in relating with people in joy, acceptance, trust, friendship, humor, playfulness, understanding, compassion, silence, sincerity, freedom and a sense of oneness in love.

During our lives we can have many relationships and some of these relationships can last for what feels like moments and others can seem to last a lifetime. It could be greeting someone we might never see again or embracing someone we will see many times. These relationships can range from a childhood friends, colleagues, family members or a partner for instance. And no matter how old or young we are; what is clear is that we have all had relationships that have started and relationships that have come to an end. For these beginnings and endings are part of life. Now, some of these may be relationships that we wish had never been started and relationships that we wish had never come to an end. But what life shows us is that we never know how long a relationship will last.

The Relationship That Lasts

However, there is one relationship that for as long as we live can never come to an end. We might wish it would end at times and deny this relationship at other times, but it still exists. And this relationship – is the one we have with ourselves. And although our external circumstances can change and our external relationships can end; this is a relationship that is always ever present and in motion.

A Metaphor

What I thought was a great metaphors for explaining this dynamic was a conversation that I had many years ago with my late father. I used to go to a martial arts club that was a short drive away from where I lived and this first began when I was at school and ended in my college years. And to paraphrase what was said in this conversation: I said something along the lines of; it is was interesting how although I had left school and other experiences had come and gone in my life, what remains is me going to this martial arts club. I recently thought about how this mirrors the relationship that we have with ourselves.

The Greatest Rejection

Even though it is possible for another human being to neglect, reject, betray, criticise and abandon us; it is also possible that we are doing these very things to ourselves internally. We can feel overwhelmed and frustrated with these external relationships and then, follow that up with the abuse and neglect of ourselves. And one thing that is certain about life is that not everyone will accept us or respond in a way that validates us. This is what makes it so important that we don’t close the door on the relationship that has the potential to bring the greatest joy and fulfilment.

Relationship with Ourselves

Whether our life will rise or fall will depend on the quality of our relationship with ourself and as an extension of that – our relationships with others. And one of the reasons why external rejection, abandonment and neglect for example are so painful is because these feelings often exist within. They are perspectives and outlooks that one can come to identify with. This is because during our childhood year’s one is often rejected and abandoned and unless these experiences have been processed, they will lay dormant and have the potential to be triggered at any moment by the relationships that one has with others.

Dependency

And if ones relationship with themselves is more or less nonexistent there will naturally be an over reliance and need for another. This can then lead to valuing another person more than one values themselves. Compromising ones needs and wants for another person. Here ones loses who they are in the other person or people and only knows who they are based on the acceptance that comes from these external relationships. Ones emotional and mental state will completely depend on other people’s behaviour.

Reintroducing Ourselves

When it comes to getting in touch with ourselves and in tune with who we are; it is not always easy. And this is often because of the ideas we have picked up from others. These ideas have then formed our perceptions of who we are. This becomes our conditioned self or ego mind and creates our identity. However, what is true and what is real for us may not have anything to do with this conditioning. The only person that can say who we are – is ourselves. So perhaps the only reason why we have neglected or rejected ourselves is because of the ideas we have about who we are. And these ideas have probably got very little to do with who we actually are.

Supporting Ourselves

Connection to our true selves is unlikely to happen overnight. And this is because like a tree or a plant that is just a seed; it takes time to open and expand onto the environment. It is also normal for one to feel unsafe and vulnerable during the early stages of reforming this relationship. And this is because the ego mind has created an identity and formed an association of what is safe based on how things were. So as one changes their connection to themselves; their identity and therefore their behaviour will change. This then has the potential to create conflict and resistance not only within, but also from without.

Being There For Ourselves

We can then begin to support ourselves from within. During the moments where we feel neglected or rejected externally; we can make sure that we are there for ourselves during these moments internally. Our own capacity to mentally and emotionally regulate and sooth ourselves will also increase. And because our own self appreciation and self respect has increased for who we are, we will also be able to ask for help when we require it.

Relationships With Others

What will also occur are deeper and more meaningful relationships with others. As I mentioned above about our relationship with others always reflecting the relationship we have with ourselves; it is a natural consequence that the relationships we have with others will change as we change. As are self integrity increases we will attract others who have integrity and by accepting who we are; it will allow other people to gravitate to us who accept us. The relationships in our life that don’t honour who we are will also begin to change and perhaps even come to an end.

The management of relationships has been a facet of business for as long as business transactions have existed. On the most basic level, Relationship Management is about interaction with customers. From a broader perspective one can consider employees, suppliers and consumers as customers, the employees being the internal customers of the organization. Relationship Management deals with the treatment and management of partnerships, connections, linkages and chains between business entities.

For the purposes of this paper, we view Relationship Management (RM) as a conscious and planned activity. It would be misleading to suggest that there have not been relationships in business or any focus on relationships by companies. However, the thrust of RM, as expounded in recent times, points to a more tactical and strategic approach to focusing on the customer rather than a relentless focus on the competition.

After the economic downturn of the 90s, many companies started to examine the possible benefits to be gained from less negotiation strong-arming, closeness to suppliers and the establishment of constructive relationships with strategic stakeholders. This does not suggest that RM was founded in the US, or has not existed before then; the Japanese had perfected RM and value-concretisation into an art form on the basis of social structure and communal creed.

RM itself has not just many types but many levels. The manufacturer has his suppliers and the end users as his customers; the retailer has the manufacturers and the end users as his customers, and manufacturer, the supplier and every organization with a tactical or strategic agenda have internal customers.

Literature Review

There have been several different sub types of Relationship Management introduced by writers, marketers and business pundits, starting from the most widely known Customer Relationship Management (Buttle, 2004; Kracklauer, Mills & Seifert, 2004) to Customer Centricity (Gummesson, 2008); Collaborative Customer Relationship Management (Kracklauer, Mills & Seifert, 2004); Supply Chain Relationship Management (Kracklauer, Mills & Seifert, 2004), Integrated Supply Chain Relationship Management (Kracklauer, Mills & Seifert, 2004), and so on. Hines (2006) delineates three types of relationships: the strategic alliance, the functional partnership and the one-sided partnerships. Donaldson & O’Toole (2007) outlines four types of relationships: partnership, friendship, adversarial and detachment. Our discussion here centres on four components of Customer Relationship Management: Customer Identification, Customer Attraction, Customer Retention and Customer Development; all of which, for the purposes of this paper, we shall consider all of these under the blanket term Relationship Management; Relationship Marketing, the management of, not the cooperation with customers; the latter being the job of relationship management, is not within the scope of this paper but since from a conceptual perspective, the difference between the two may not be as simplistic and marked, it may be mentioned or discussed in passing.

It appears or so it seems that there must be a relationship problem in every relationship. This is one aspect in relationship that very many people pray they will never experience. But be sure and understand that the only place where relationship problems will not occur is a place where there is no relationship at all. No matter how small or casual a relationship looks like, there are problems associated with it. The earlier you learn this truth the more prepared you would be when these problems arise. Most times while we find it difficult to get along again with our partner after having a relationship problem is because often than not we don’t prepare for them before they come. Actually nobody ever wishes to experience any problem in his or her relationship but we can never no matter how we try run away from relationship problems. While I want this stuck in your head is for you to understand that it is not a strange thing for you to be passing through this kind of relationship problems. Have you heard of the saying that says that “what goes for the duck is also good for the geese” meaning that somebody somewhere is also having a serious challenge in his or her own relationship? You see, you are not alone on this side of the ship. Yes there are some persons whose relationship problems are more terrible than the one you might be thinking that you have. So my dear relationship problems are actually one of the features of relationship. Though you are free to pray not to have these problems at all but my candid advice is that you should create a room for it in your heart. i don’t mean you should harbour or create problems for yourself, but to know what to do when it eventually comes. This will enhance you with the utmost wisdom you will need to handle the situation maturely. Don’t worry, no matter what it is, it will soon wear out like the snow when the sun smiles.

Now, having understood that relationship problems are part of the ways of a relationship. Let’s now look at reasons why a relationship would always have challenges. There are lots of relationship problems scattered all over the world. So it will be very difficult trying to enumerate all the relationship problems and what causes them. But I will try and see how best you will be helped in discovering those things you must have neglected that are trying to cost you your relationship. It is until you discover the cause of your problem you may not exactly know how to handle them.

There is another fact I would want to make you understand. Sometimes when people start having problem in their relationship, they more often than not exonerate themselves from being the cause of the relationship problem; they only see a greater percentage of the problem in the other person. Let me share with you some pivot reasons why most relationship have problems. Perhaps you would have a deeper understanding of your situation.